t w e nt y.

THE UPRISING
A CHANGE OF SEASONS
A TRICKLE OF BLOOD... THE UNIVERSAL SOUND

T he lights cycle quickly at Northrop Grumman, for

the important people in nondescript cars. Everyone
is vulnerable. How to stay ahead? The software companies
do it by changing the formula for every iteration. No choice.
You’ve got to upgrade to the new version every season — ev-
erything has changed. I’m constantly refreshing my own con-
tent. I’d like to make a living at this, but I’m not going to do
it for the money. It has to be uncontrolled, or else why write
the revolution? The only control or filter I apply is structural:
moving paragraphs together that continue the thought, drop-
ping repetitive things, changing a word here or there. I have no
concept of audience, marketing trends — although I do push
through social media. I feel the work only marginally, subcon-
sciously. It works itself out before I understand what it is, as if
appearing from a mist. It looks like it will develop into my own
brand of micro–doc. The video shorts and these 2,000 word
essays will probably merge, or a new show will branch from
it. These first 21 essays are sketches only, toward a new ex-
pression. After the last of these I want to combine essays with
experimental video, something crazy, compelling, ten minutes
— the same thing, only condensed, maybe a long essay now
and then, to feed the wolves. I want to descend further, out of
the hyperbole and concrete, down to the subconscious. I want
to write the way a child draws, with no reservation or control,
completely wild.
***
I’m being watched. It draws them. The old man stoops
nearly to the floor. An imaginary fire, bones and animal skins,
the river courses underfoot, steel rails; the light through the
trees “exit to street.” What do we know? A trickle of blood
remains on the seat in front of me. It draws a woman with a
straw hat, who turns her bug eyes to the door, suspicious. Her
long nails ring on the handrail. Another leap through black
spaces lit by blue fluorescents and we drift under the bridges.
I’m not able to stay adrift for long. No place on the green, ev-
eryone taking two seats. I took one anyway, half out in the
aisle.
Micro code. No location. Writing the ground. The sto-
ry exists only momentarily. It comes out from the page, re-
mains there briefly. Can you remember even the last sentence?
What’s to tell? The thrumming sound of the black–line state as
I pass over Raytheon. A woman crinkles a plastic bag like she’s
trapped in it, eating her way out — another crime of these
toxic things that never erode. We fly over a slow moving soccer
game and one of several fields of weeds. If they would only
open the razor wire. We never have a chance. Every street, ev-
ery sidewalk has a purpose, all the street lights hang in gentle
arches. My eyes fall closed, my mind vibrating coarsely.
“Excuse me, are you a writer?”
How does she know? I’m exhausted from the weekend,
a marathon whirlwind of work in Rancho Mirage remodel-
ing the home of a wealthy client, his plasma screens flickering
scenes of the Egyptian uprising in every room. It was tremen-
dous! How long the people have been enslaved. How many
repercussions? You can’t grow good quality humans in a dog
pen. We are our own demise — and what for? Who benefits?
More importantly, are there any heroes anymore?
We were not raised in an age of heroes. What few there
were we’re gunned down. I didn’t know any growing up, had
no role models to emulate — maybe the astronauts, more
likely the fake ones in science fiction novels. We live in fiction.
Movie stars are our royalty. Kye Soen’s oldest, now 14, lives
almost entirely inside an Xbox 360. He doesn’t want to talk to
the people on the outside. We are far too one–dimensional and
probably disappointing. Maybe it’s better. A revolution only
happens once in a lifetime. Otherwise it’s all flashing lights,
“registration please,” punching the clock, candy for sale…
somebody sings a few bars of an old song, then switches on a
radio and sings along with it. He’s good. Sunflower seeds from
the guy in front. “I’ll give you some.” What a crazy, vibrant
chord. My nerves are shimmering. Everyone is gentle tonight
— this dream — this blue state. The train moves on impervi-
ous, but the pulse through the floor, the beat, the moaning…
what is life?
“Good to meet you.”
My hands are in bad shape from the rat tunnel I’ve been
crawling through, my tiny heart still racing. I would live some
other way, but I need the freedom to sit long retreats, to leave
town, to be pressed to the ground. I wasn’t given a break, so
I don’t believe in them, and I don’t admire those that ride on
the sore backs of others. My choice. This state of fatigue and
adrenaline, I sleep in increments. Dreams boil to the surface,
all the small worries magnified, all the fake conversations,
overwrought emotions. I’m always glad to pull away. Here I’m
a man. Here I’m invincible.
***
The sweet humming of a train descending underground.
We all leap out as if escaping our dreams. A laughing lady
passes me, surely freed from some pleasant node. How much
is real anymore? How many of us on the platform observe the
fine details here, like an exquisite painting? As I struggle to
break my gaze from the handicap sign, a young woman with
a strange accent ducks into the train, my guess at a red–line
train to NOHO.
“I’m from Texas. We don’t have stuff like this. Hell yeah.”
And so I feel again the sting of my superior existence to
those less fortunate than I. All the people in Burma, Egypt,
whose lives are eaten up in the struggle for basic freedoms,
necessities. How can we rise above our constraints when it’s
all we’ve known? Doesn’t the rabbit want to return to its cage?
It must be the image we portray, those of us in their eyes privi-
leged. If it’s any consolation, I’m doing what I can to give back,
to use any advantage I have to illustrate the madness of inter-
secting timelines, coursing emotions, thoughts, projections;
lives embroiled in them; lives in fragments; symbolic lives em-
bedded in archetypes, stereotypes; pulled from the mold as
nearly exact replicas of the father, the grandfather — how we
think, work, process. Be thankful that we don’t have to join a
revolution in this life, to waste our lives rebuilding the frame
so our children can grow a different way. How much do we
already sacrifice for this?
Whatever living we manage to eke out, there’s a greater
existential quandary we face, all of us. This is my ground,
so of course I mean to reveal it, but there’s more to life
than feeding the stomach. Whether or not you agree with
this, the question remains. Here is where the real revolu-
tion takes place, where you stand up, as an individual, and
take command of your affairs. It has to happen this way,
for inside each of us is the answer to the rancor, the unrest.
The uprising may be a black mark on our history, but what
is history compared to the well–being of a single man,
woman, or child? In the same way we must revolt against
the institution — our tendency to follow the words of oth-
ers, their dreams, rather than make our own. What good is
the arc of a movement, its popularity, if it doesn’t liberate
you even from its own devices? The mark of a good teacher
is one who pushes you away, in some respects, who helps
you to find your own way. It’s a subterranean process, as
much heat and pressure. The revolution begins there, in
discovering the enormity of it, releasing hold on the sur-
face peculiarities. Who is so arrogant as to offer advice, to
channel your attention elsewhere? And whatever arrange-
ment of things, rituals, mental constraints… I feel that I’ve
been shouting, finally, my mouth open constantly to the
roar that escapes me. It is the sound of 10,000 leagues.
I do not choose to exist here. I am here, so I take care
of the things around me. Sometimes I forget, disappear.
The man beside me folds his newspaper, impervious. Is he
here with me, or lost to streams of imagery? If we were in
a dream I would talk to him through the page, rewrite the
story as he reads it: a love story, a tragedy, a thousand trag-
edies; a wake, a single note from the orchestra for which
they’ve studied their entire lives. The conductor is aston-
ished, faints on the spot. The note widens. Everyone hears
it now, the universal sound, every mouth stretched to its
limits, every ear turned inward, every face full of tears.
There is no end of crying now, no more sadness, intimacy
— no lack! All heads turn down, as if in prayer. Everything
is God. All the weapons, placards, burning flags — all of it
on the ground, trampled. There are no more words.
My friend folds his newspaper, rubs his eyes. The door
closes on metro station.